There have been many Metrolinx consultations recently, and a few common threads appeared sitting through this many hours of their presentations and Q&A sessions. Some of the frustration with Metrolinx comes from the way they present material, and from what appear to be shifting positions on key issues.
What Is The Don Valley Yard?
As a quick review, this “yard” is in fact a single storage track, the former CPR, now Metrolinx, Don Branch that once connected the CPR mainline at Leaside to Union Station. It is called a yard because the original proposal was for a three track yard south of the Prince Edward Viaduct.
Metrolinx proposes to convert the portion of this line for storage of three trains between the point where the line crosses to the east side of the Don River roughly at Rosedale Valley Road and the high level bridge near the Brick Works. The site is not accessible by public transit, although it is passed on one side by the DVP and on the other by the Don Valley Trail with many cyclists and pedestrians.
Here is the aerial view.
Metrolinx June 29, 2021 Presentation, p. 2
This will require the creation of a service road alongside the track for access to and from stored trains as well as supporting buildings and a small parking lot just north of the Prince Edward Viaduct. The site servicing plan, which includes buildings, roads, utilities and elevations (grey numbers on the diagonal giving the height above sea level in metres) is shown below. The buildings (from south to north) include an electrical building, and air compressor, a staff building and a sanitary waste building.
Click for a higher resolution image.
The valley floor rises gradually to about 80m at the western edge of the Metrolinx site, but the roadway linking the buildings is at about 88m. The parking area shown is on the valley floor, but there is a ramp for vehicles up to the level of the rail corridor. There is also a stairway from the parking up to the staff building. The land owned by Metrolinx is outlined in a broken black line “— – –”. Because of the change in elevation, a retaining wall (yellow in the aerial view) at least 8m high will be required except adjacent to the rail line.
The claimed purpose of the facility is to store three trains between the AM and PM peak periods and, possibly, to perform some light servicing on them. This does not align with the original proposal that clearly talked of a 7×24 operation with three shifts of staff. That might have been an error, a cut-and-paste job from one layover site to another, but the traffic study does speak of arrivals and departures corresponding to shift changes well outside of the midday period.
In any event, there is no provision in the plan for fuelling and Metrolinx claims that they intend to operate here only between the peak periods. We shall see.
The Toronto Archives have mounted a large online display celebrating the TTC’s coming centenary in September 2021. The photo selection is very good, although heavy on construction in places because that is the sort of thing that was documented in detail at the time.
Parts of this exhibit are also on view in various locations around the subway system.
On June 30, Metrolinx held an online consultation for the North Segment of the Ontario Line between Gerrard and Science Centre Stations. Much of the discussion focused on plans for the Maintenance and Storage Facility at Thorncliffe Park.
The presentation deck and video of the session are available for those who want to review the whole thing.
The agenda for the meeting called for a half-hour presentation from Metrolinx, but they ran over by almost double. To their credit they kept the meeting going until they had run out of questions from the online audience.
Since the previous update, there has been a minor change in the alignment near Millwood and Overlea. The Don Valley crossing has been shifted slightly and the entrance to Thorncliffe Park moved to the north side of Overlea Boulevard. This is simpler to build because only Millwood must be crossed, and it moves the structure further away from residences on Leaside Park Drive.
The alignment east of there including the MSF layout is unchanged.
Long-time readers of this blog will know that I do not post commercial pitches here. Lots of people have things that they want to sell, but that’s not what my site is about.
Here is an exception.
Richard F. Glaze was a visitor to and later resident of Toronto for decades. He started shooting photographs and film of the TTC while I was still at the “look, a streetcar!” stage my evolution. He was a crusty guy who would show up on fantrips, and our paths would cross socially from time to time.
About 18 months ago, Richard’s vast collection of slides and six hours of colour film were passed on to James Bow who many will know for his site Transit Toronto. Images from Richard’s collection have appeared regularly there as James worked his way through scanning the collection.
The film material is another matter, though, and it requires professional handling for cleaning, high quality scanning, colour and exposure restoration. To that end James has mounted a Kickstarter campaign in the hopes of funding this work. The short term goal is $6,900, and this will pay for about one quarter of the work.
For those interested in the preservation of Toronto’s transit history, this is a worthy goal. You can visit the Transit Toronto website where there is a sample of restored video (streetcars on Rogers Road) and a link to the Kickstarter page. The cutoff date for the campaign is July 16, 2021.
Richard’s photos appear in many places on the Transit Toronto site, but there is a small selection and brief bio here.
To whet your appetite, here a few shots taken from Transit Toronto’s site.
Glen Echo Loop with a regular service car (3010) and a fantrip (2528) signed utterly inappropriately for the location Lakeshore Road at Parkside Drive looking east to Sunnyside Amusement Park. The Gardiner Expressway doomed all of this.Queen and Bay looking northwest. Today New City Hall would be in the background. Street decorations anticipate the coronation of Elizabeth II.
In about two years, July 2023, the Scarborough RT will shut down and be replaced by bus services until a Line 2 Scarborough Subway Extension opens in 2030. For seven years or more, riders will use buses to reach Kennedy terminal on Line 2, a change that will strain both the transit service and roads.
The TTC has a survey underway to July 16, 2021, to find out how riders think the bus service should operate, and to get a sense of how they use the bus network today.
The SRT operates primarily as a link between Scarborough Centre (aka STC) and Kennedy Stations with Lawrence East Station in a distant third place mainly because of transfer traffic from the 54/954 Lawrence East bus services. A replacement service does not have to duplicate the route of the SRT, but rather serve travel patterns between the major nodes.
The TTC plans to extend many routes now terminating at STC to Kennedy, but the challenge lies in the route that they will take. The combined service at peak will be about 1 minute, and that will strain road capacity. A saving grace is that buses will not stop often, and so they will not queue at curbside, but this bring an operational challenge for any mixture of local and express services. A reserved lane works best if buses do not have to pass each other by merging into other traffic.
On the Toronto Executive Committee agenda for July 6, there is a report updating Council on the status of various rapid transit projects in Toronto. Notable by their absence are the Waterfront East LRT (study in progress as previously reported) and the Eglinton East LRT extension.
The truly galling part is found in two letters from Metrolinx, compounded by the abject parroting by City staff of Metrolinx creative writing in the City’s own report.
The documents are linked here:
Update on Metrolinx Transit Expansion Projects –Second Quarter 2021
Letter from Karla Avis Birch, Chief Planning Officer, Metrolinx, to Derrick Toigo, Executive Director, Transit Expansion Division, City of Toronto re the Ontario Line alignment
Letter from Phil Verster, CEO of Metrolinx to Derrick Toigo re the Ontario Line Maintenance and Storage Facility in Thorncliffe Park
The fundamental problem is that Council asked Metrolinx to consider alternatives to their design for the Ontario Line in Riverside (East Harbour to Gerrard Station) and in Thorncliffe Park (the location of the line’s storage yard).
Metrolinx chose to reply with analyses of options that were not those of concern to Council that addressed proposals from the affected communities. What Metrolinx did do was to trot out analyses of previously rejected options as if this somehow validated their position.
To give the impression that Metrolinx has “responded” to the city is a misrepresentation of what has happened, and it suggests that City staff in the Transit Expansion Division are more interested in buttressing Metrolinx’ case than answering Council’s request.
Metrolinx will be holding an online consultation on Tuesday, June 29, for its Don Valley Layover scheme. There is a lot of misinformation on this proposal coming from Metrolinx, but as with so many of their schemes, they are bulling ahead.
Full disclosure: I live immediately adjacent to the proposed storage and servicing facility on the east side of the Don River north of the Prince Edward Viaduct. I have a direct interest in the effect of Metrolinx plans and the effect they will have because of the potential for noise and light pollution.
First, it is important that readers understand Metrolinx plans and the supposed function of what they wish to build.
Updated June 29, 2021 at 8:00 am: Additional drawings regarding sound level measurements have been added as well as a commentary on peak versus averaged sound levels.
GO Transit New Facilities
The plans are part of the GO Transit New Track and Facilities scheme which includes new layover yards in various locations around the system. This plan already has Ministerial approval and could proceed at any time to detailed design and construction.
GO Transit plans two new facilities in what they broadly refer to as the Richmond Hill Corridor. The purpose of the two are sometimes confused in Metrolinx presentations with the result that the debate becomes tangled thanks to one plan’s being confused with the other.
As the corridor leaves Union Station, it runs along the north edge of the rail embankment and then swings north along the west side of the Don River. This corridor actually contains two separate railways as they then were.
One is the former Canadian National Bala Subdivision. This takes a meandering path north and is owned by Metrolinx to the point where it crosses the CN York Subdivision, the east-west freight route parallel to Highway 7. North of that junction the line is still owned by CN. The Richmond Hill GO service uses this route.
The other is the former Canadian Pacific Don Branch which linked Union Station to the CPR’s main line at the former Leaside Station. The line was abandoned decades ago for rail service, but it was bought by Metrolinx. It splits off from the rail line on the west side of the river roughly at Rosedale Valley Road, crosses to the east side, and runs beside the DVP to Pottery Road where it crosses on a high bridge.
The map below shows the corridor from the south end of the Don River (left) to Pottery Road (right). (For a high resolution version of this plan, click here.)
The TTC has filled in some of the details on 51 Leslie, 88 South Leaside and 354 Lawrence East Night. See the individual sections of this article for details.
The TTC has launched public consultations for its 2022 Service Plan. This will be a difficult year in which ridership is expected, at best, to climb back to 75 per cent of pre-pandemic levels. Budgets will be tight because the transit system plans to be operating close to 100 per cent of is former service (building up gradually on the buses for January 2022, then streetcars and finally the subway) even though fare revenue will be at a lower level. The TTC recognizes that it needs to provide good service to attract riders back to the system.
For the week of June 4-11, boardings on each of the TTC’s networks by vehicle type are still below 50 per cent of January 2020 values:
Bus: 40%
Streetcar: 27%
Subway: 23%
Overall: 31%
Trip occupancy for buses is generally below the target level.
4% of trips are over 50% full
0.6% of trips are over 70% full
0.3% of trips are over 80% full
An important distinction about crowding measurements is that as ridership recovers, a the definition of a “full” bus will rise from 25 riders today, to 35 and then to the “standard” full load of 51. Service levels and crowding in 2022 will be measured and allocated against this shifting target. In the short term, service will be provided at a crowding level below pre-pandemic times.
Crowding levels reported now are all day, all route, all week values, and they hide problem areas in the system. The TTC still does not break out reports on crowding or service quality by route, location or time of day. Their “On Time Departure Report” has not been updated in several years, and although there is still a link to it from the Customer Service page, the link is dead.
The 2018 Customer Charter is still linked and it includes a commitment, carried forward from the 2013 Charter:
Posting the performance of all surface routes on our website so you know how your route is performing.
One might ask why Rick Leary, the man Andy Byford hired to improve service, is incapable of producing reports of service quality beyond the extremely superficial level found in his monthly CEO’s Report. The TTC have detailed crowding data and use them internally, but do not publish them. As for on time performance or headway reliability, I have written extensively about problems with service quality and these metrics. Even though service is the top of riders’ desires, it is not reported by the TTC probably because the numbers would be too embarrassing.
This is a gaping hole in TTC Service – the absence of meaningful reporting and measurement of service quality as experienced by riders.
Although the TTC plans to return to 100 per cent service, this does not mean that the service patterns will match those of early 2020. Demand patterns have changed both in daily patterns (peaks or their absence) and location (heavier demand to suburban jobs in sectors where work from home is impossible). To the extent that peaks are smaller or non-existent, this works in the TTC’s favour by allowing a higher ratio of service hours to driving hours (buses spend less time, proportionately, going to and from garages). This also, of course, spreads out demand and can reduce crowding.
A new phenomenon is the early morning peak caused by commutes to jobs outside the core. This produces crowding even on some Blue Night Routes, and the TTC is looking at how this can be resolved.
There is a page on the TTC’s site including a link to a survey about planned changes including some new and revised routes, as well as the plan for route restructuring to accompany the opening of Line 5 Eglinton Crosstown. Tentatively, that line is expected to begin running on July 31, 2022 according to the TTC, but that is simply a planning target, not a hard date.
In this article, I have grouped the planned changes geographically to pull together information on related routes rather than numerically as they appear on the TTC’s site. I have also included information on some changes planned for later in 2021 to put the proposed 2022 route structure in context.
There is a separate consultation process launching soon regarding the future service design for the period between the shutdown of Line 3 Scarborough RT in mid 2023 and the opening of the Line 2 Scarborough extension in fall 2030.
There are three major components in the 2022 plan:
Optimize the network to match capacity with demand.
Restructure the network for the opening of 5 Eglinton Crosstown.
Modify the network to respond to customer requests, evolving demand patterns and new developments.
All maps in this article are from the TTC’s website.
On June 24, 2021, Metrolinx held an online consultation session for the Ontario Line segment between the Don River and Gerrard Station.
In a distinct change from a previous round, Metrolinx did not begin by insulting the audience with claims that the session would deal with “myths and misinformation”. This is refreshing and long overdue. Metrolinx appears to be going out of its way to fine-tune the design through Riverside to produce the least side-effects as possible while preserving their preferred alignment. Although they are looking at underground alternatives, much of their work focuses on their planned scheme with a shared GO+OL corridor.
Since the previous articles I have written on this project, the East Segment Neighbourhood Update page has been substantially revised.
Metrolinx has revised maps of this segment to show the Ontario Line on the north side of the rail corridor rather than the “straddle” configuration previously shown.
In a recent article Metrolinx Plans Major Grade Change on Lakeshore East Corridor I noted that a new set of drawings had appeared in the Ontario Line Neighbourhood Update, East web page showing a proposed change in the elevation of tracks in the shared GO/OL corridor between East Harbour and Gerrard Stations.
Here is a Metrolinx illustration showing the change. The layout as originally proposed is on top, and the revised layout is on the bottom. Note that where green space is shown neside the corridor, this does not necessarily exist as some of the Metrolinx property line is at or close to the sidewalk. The retaining wall plus noise barrier would be immediately adjacent.
I posed a series of questions to Metrolinx in an attempt to sort fact from fiction on this matter, and today had a call with their project staff to sort through the issues. The principal speakers for Metrolinx were Malcolm MacKay and Richard Tucker.
When was the decision made to regrade the rail corridor? Why is this being done?
According to Metrolinx, this has been underway for at least 6 months as a collaborative effort with the TTC and City of Toronto to establish bridge clearances and other design elements.
Substandard clearances are a concern on the road network for both the City and the TTC. Those of us who follow TTC service interruption reports often read of “mechanical problems” near Queen and DeGrassi Streets. These are almost always due to damaged or broken overhead thanks either to a dewirement, or to an over-height vehicle striking the TTC wires.
A related concern is that the bridges in this corridor are about a century old, and this is an opportunity to replace them with new structures that will have lower maintenance costs
Later in the conversation, I asked whether Metrolinx was saying, in effect, that “the City made us do it”. To this they responded strongly that they are not blaming the City, but there is a 5m standard for bridge clearances that they are following. They went on to say, possibly imprudently, that there were pro and anti camps on the question of whether this work should be done.
Obviously the pro camp won out, but drawings showing the change are quite recent, and there is no mention of this in all of the studies that have been published.
What is the extent of the work, i.e. between what locations will the track be raised from its current level?
From east of the Don River to Gerrard Street. According to Metrolinx, he TTC still has an interest in the Dundas Street bridge because they are protecting for an extension of streetcar service to Gerrard Station via Dundas and Carlaw.
By how much will the track be raised?
The change varies by location, but it will be between 900mm and 1500mm according to Metrolinx. For those who still think in Imperial measure, that’s just under 3 feet to just under 5 feet.
I asked whether a plan showing the new elevations exists in the style of “roll plans” that have been provided for other corridor projects. This will probably be published along with other details for the next round of public consultations later in 2021.
What are your staging plans for maintaining GO service during this work?
Metrolinx would likely slew the existing GO tracks to create work space on one side of the rail corridor at a time. This would allow all work to be done within the corridor rather than using adjacent spaces. Metrolinx’ property is wide enough for six tracks, and this means that three could be maintained in operation by shifting them to one side while work was done on the other side. There are no switches in this segment, and therefore shifting the tracks is relatively straightforward.
If low ridership on GO continues long enough, it might be possible to reduce the corridor temporarily to two tracks giving more room to work around the live operations.
What are the effects on the bridges in the affected area?
The bridges are old dating back to 1924. Metrolinx intends to replace them with new structures regardless of whether they are owned by the City or Metrolinx.
The elevation change will be entirely at Metrolinx track level. The road elevations will not change.
When I published my article, a few emails arrived suggesting what was behind this change. One claimed that the High Frequency Rail (HFR) project wanted a different track standard to support their planned operating speed. This seemed a bit far-fetched considering how close the tracks in question are to Union Station, and how short (2km) the segment is. The change in travel time from Toronto to Montreal would probably be measured in seconds.
Can you confirm or deny that at least part of the reason for the regrading is to suit HFR? If so, does the intent to use “tilting” trains change the spacing of the tracks needed for clearance?
Metrolinx replied that HFR did not play into decision making for rail heights or tilting trains. The alignment is designed to Metrolinx standards. They are not precluding HFR, but not changing bridges or track layout on HFR’s behalf.
A Question of Transparency
I will take it on faith that the City and TTC really have been working with Metrolinx for half a year on this matter, and that there may have been a debate about whether regrading the corridor and raising the bridges was actually necessary.
That said, Metrolinx published extensive studies and community presentations showing the corridor at its present elevation, and with no provision for the construction effects of rebuilding the segment from the Don River to Gerrard, not even a mention as a possibile subject for further study.
There has been no evaluation of the construction effects, and proposals regarding mitigation of the combined OL and GO effects here are based on current track elevations. This affects sound barrier heights and the amount of room available for corridor “softening” with treatments such as vegetated slopes or additional trees where room is available for them. The drawings purporting to show what the corridor would look like simply do not match what Metrolinx now plans to build.
All this is not to say that raising the corridor and improving clearances are, on their own, bad ideas. It would be refreshing to have fewer service interruptions on the streetcar network here, especially considering that over half of the fleet is based just east of this bridge at Leslie Barns and Russell Carhouse.
If this has been a City and TTC concern for months, why does the local Councillor not appear to know this could be part of the project scope?
Another obvious question must be what effect this will have on the project’s cost and duration. Who is picking up the tab?
One cannot help wondering whether it is only good fortune that this design change came to light during the current round of consultations.
What else don’t we know about Metrolinx’ intent in this and other corridors?
All of the debates about the project until now were based on a false presentation of how the enlarged use of the rail corridor would affect the neighbourhood.
This is not just a question of settling a debate among “the experts” about whether to raise the rail corridor or not. This is not a minor scope change. This is not an “oops”.
Even with the best of intentions, the basic issues are transparency in public consultation and trust in Metrolinx.
Steve Munro 